Mad Boy

by Nick Arvin

  But perhaps it was for the best, because after they struck among the American cannon for several minutes, the British guns swung and struck a hundred feet to the left and walked down the line that way, with steps that shredded men, blinded them, set their ears bleeding. Nothing could be done, only wait, and watch the movements of the redcoats, as precise and inexorable as a huge spring and gear driven machine.

  Haystacks stood scattered around the fields, and some of the rockets fell short and set them afire. The fires made their own wind, sweeping cinders upward, which then fell into other haystacks. The American cannon, trying to reach the rocket tubes, hit the farmhouses and set those burning, too. Smoke piled in a dense haze, and it hurt Franklin’s eyes to watch the British line—at first he wasn’t sure if they were moving. He could see only a shimmering of the rough red stroke between the green of the field and the green of the trees. But presently they grew bigger, gained detail. They sent skirmishers ahead, to cover behind the burning haystacks and take shots while the main line came relentlessly on, with a little bow or flex here or there as a reminder that it was made of men.

  Now the smoke from the Americans’ discharge thins, and Franklin can see the redcoats are nearer, can see them stop, raise arms—

  The entire long, long red line fires at once. It is as if he is before the firing squad again: a great black maw opens to swallow the world.

  A scream erupts beside him—it is John Thaddeus, a mole-eyed man, the best maker of fires that Franklin ever met, able to build a ripping flame in an open field in a downpour. Thaddeus writhes on the ground, and Franklin winces, horrified, but continues the steps of loading. Push empty paper into the muzzle, draw ramrod, ram down, level powder, ram wadding, return ramrod.

  The redcoats advance now by alternate half units—it is as if only the white squares in a checkerboard row move ahead, crenelating the line. The forward units halt, raise arms, fire—then begin to reload. Meanwhile the rear units start forward, pass through the first line, advance ten paces further, halt, aim, fire. The first line, now reloaded, starts forward.

  Franklin fires. There’s so much smoke swirling that it’s like shooting into a fog bank. Each blast from the redcoats rouses fresh screams, and the American line around Franklin begins to draw together into clumps and clusters. But the officers shout and curse, and the men stay in place along the fence.

  The redcoats are near enough that Franklin can see the gilt on their chin straps. The Americans fire raggedly, as fast as they can. The British still fire on command. They loom in the haze like phantoms, and their muskets make red tongues of flame that churn the smoke. Wadding falls from the muskets still smoldering and lights further fires in the dry grass. As Franklin finishes loading his third round, he cannot see the redcoats at all. Some of the men around him are lying down, trying to aim underneath the smoke. Franklin glances back, slings his rifle, turns, runs to the woods. During the long wait he had identified a likely spot—a hickory tree with an opening in the branches toward the field.

  He comes first to Henry.

  Henry stands in the underbrush, tattered, face so begrimed that the whites of his eyes gleam startling and wild. He smiles like everything’s going just as he hoped.

  Franklin stalls, gapes. “Henry!” In a rage, he seizes Henry by the armpit, pulls him squirming to the hickory, flings Henry onward into the woods. “Go!” Franklin starts climbing. “You little idiot!”

  Franklin climbs with the quick steady confidence of a bear. As he moves upward, Henry shouts, his words lost in the smash of another British volley. Franklin yells, “Go! Why won’t you go?”

  “You’re a father!” Those seem to be Henry’s words amid the general pandemonium. Franklin hesitates. “You have a son!”

  Franklin’s heart surges—but it is a thing to contemplate another time. “I’m glad!” he shouts. “Now go somewhere safe!”

  He swings to plant the brass nails of his boot on a branch and levels his rifle. Here the thickest writhing smoke lies below, and he can sight the length of the redcoats’ line, less than fifty feet beyond the Americans. An officer leads the British, wearing a red silk sash tied around his waist, his saber shoulder-high, flashing arcs in the sun to cadence the march.

  Franklin pots him. He begins reloading as the officer’s shining saber twitches, droops, falls.

  Henry retreats a few paces, ducks behind a large old oak, considers himself safe enough. Why, he thinks, the dead here will be all in a nice row, not scattered hither and yon, as they were at Bladensburg.

  Peering about, however, he notices a human shape bent at the foot of a nearby tree. And another such shape further to the left, and then he spots a pair on the right, lumped shapes in tattered clothes, secreted in the brush.

  Looters! Henry scowls, hating them.

  The British have nearly reached the American line. In the road, the cannon are already gone, leaving only the pieces of one that was hit by a British shell, scattered like a beetle picked apart by idle boys. The line of redcoats discharge another round with a colossal crash. A patter of American shots reply amid the shouts, scarcely intelligible, of an order—the American blue coats turn, run.

  They race past Henry with faces blackened by powder burn, wide-eyed, openmouthed.

  The redcoats swarm the fence, roaring oaths and huzzahs. Most of them pause to prod the American bodies and peer into the trees. Behind them the smoke roils over the fields; the haystacks and farm buildings burn in a vast conflagration.

  A shot sounds away down the tree line, then another, nearer. Henry worries they are shooting looters—but no. The redcoats are firing upward, into the trees.

  A body in a blue jacket topples and his musket falls, but his foot catches in a crotch of the tree, and he dangles.

  Franklin is overhead, although he’s worked himself around the trunk so he can’t be seen from the field. Why doesn’t he flee? But then Henry sees that a number of redcoats, from the direction of the American left flank, have already circled deeper into the woods.

  Another treed American shouts his surrender. The British jeer, then shoot him. The body lands with a dull slap.

  Meanwhile, one of the redcoats approaches Franklin’s tree—Franklin has his rifle on the man, but the shot will betray him.

  The situation makes Henry furious—furious with Franklin, furious with the British, furious with Mother, Father, Suthers, Mary, babies, cripples, cretins, everyone. Hugging himself, Henry trembles with frustration until he can’t bear it.

  Then, unable to think of anything else to do, he stands up, in the open.

  The nearest redcoat, pimpled and thick-faced, chuffing heavy breaths, staring upward, doesn’t notice.

  So Henry says, “Hello?”

  The redcoat swings his musket on Henry, fires.

  The shot snaps into leafy earth, well wide. Henry ignores it. “Excuse me?” he says, staring around. He touches the still raw welt where he struck his head the night before. “What now? What happened?”

  The redcoat calls, shakily, “Only a boy! It’s just a boy.”

  “Must’ve hit me on the head,” Henry says. “That one hit me on the head.” He points to the nearest looter, cowering in a mud-spattered jacket. The looter startles.

  “What?” the redcoat asks, looking at the looter, at Henry.

  “Or maybe it was those two,” Henry says, pointing to the pair to the right.

  They jump up, a man and a woman, lean, haggard creatures, and they back away toward the road, muttering, “No no no no no no.”

  The redcoat looks around, bewildered. Several other redcoats, curious, are drifting nearer. Henry edges toward the smoky open fields. “They were talking together. The lot of them. How do I know which one hit me?”

  Everyone stares at Henry.

  “I think they were all arguing about important papers,” he says. “Or maps. Army maps, I think.”
>
  “These people?” The redcoat gestures at the disheveled looters. “Arguing about army maps?” The redcoat laughs. “Come now. I don’t believe that.”

  “That’s right!” The first looter—a tall, emaciated man with a wispy billy goat beard—aims a shaking finger at Henry. “He’s a liar!”

  The redcoat turns his bayonet on the looter. “Now quiet down, you. The boy’s a liar, but he’s not a good one.”

  The pair of looters by the road take this chance to bolt. The pimpled redcoat wheels and shouts, “Come back!” Several redcoats go after them. The billy goat looter then sets out running in the other direction. The pimpled redcoat spins and shouts after him, too.

  The redcoats all around are in an uproar. “Papers! They have important papers!” someone yells. More looters pop out of the bushes, from behind trees. The redcoats shout and chase after this looter and that one. One of the redcoats fires a shot, narrowly missing another group of redcoats, and they berate one another. An officer wades into the scene, bellowing, waving his sword.

  Meanwhile Henry watches Franklin drop from the tree, bend low, and dart into the woods.

  “Ha! Ha!” Henry cries, to pull attention from Franklin’s direction. He dashes into the open field, rushing straight past two redcoats—they’re fighting over a bottle of whiskey amid the American dead and pay no heed to Henry. Henry scampers on, toward where the smoke is thickest, calling, “Ha! Ha! Ha!” like a maniacal bird.

  He doesn’t look back. Franklin should have a good chance to slip off. Henry worries for him, but exasperatedly. By now the bodies are well looted, and it’s Franklin’s fault that he’s missed his chance, again.

  Weaving between burning haystacks, he runs to the far side of the field.

  There he stops to catch his breath and look around. He wonders if Radnor is here. As he searches the scene for black soldiers, an idea resolves itself in his mind.

  Radnor sits at a campfire more than a thousand feet from the little Quaker meeting house where the surgeons have set up, but he can hear quite plainly the screams of their patients, can see the pile of arms and legs mounting beside the meeting house door.

  Radnor’s unit advanced on the left flank of the battle, where they met little resistance, but the day’s march and the excitement of the fighting have been utterly exhausting. The other Colonial Marines lie here and there on beds of leaves and pine needles, but Radnor finds he cannot sleep to the sound of the butchering of living men. He gazes dully into the fire.

  Around midnight the surgeons are still at their task. Rain clicks and ticks in the leaves above. Presently the rain grows into a deluge that beats Radnor’s fire down. But it is a kind of relief, because in the downpour he can scarcely hear the men losing their limbs. He begins to think that even in the rain he might finally sleep a little.

  Incredibly, however, he hears a whippoorwill.

  He casts his gaze a moment toward the watering, black heavens and listens as the whippoorwill grows louder and louder, then wild and implausible, more like a swine call.

  Finally he rises, stalks across the fresh mud, finds the boy peering from behind the dripping branches of a low willow—he’s vague in the dark, but Radnor can see he’s hatless, skinny, forlorn, touchy looking as a bedraggled cat. “Boy,” Radnor says. “Why’re you here? You’ll wind up with your bottom cheeks filled with shot. You’re not so good at sneaking around as you think.”

  “I can’t hear Mother anymore,” Henry says.

  “I’m sure she’s been given a heap of thoughtfulness by the pickling you put her into.”

  “And, Radnor,” Henry says, “Suthers said that he’s my father.”

  “He did, did he.”

  “You think it’s true? Suthers is my father?”

  “Your mother had many hard days. Mr. Phipps had other comforts. Who knows but what might have happened on one night or another when Phipps was away.”

  Henry says nothing.

  “I never had any father I can recall,” Radnor says. “But seems to me that it doesn’t matter to God, and shouldn’t matter to you. Your father is who treated you as his son and who you treated as your father. Consult your own heart.”

  “I’d like to kill Suthers, I think.”

  Radnor shrugs. “You already burned his house to the ground. That why you come for me? To tell me about your mother and Suthers? I’m finished with Suthers.”

  “I found this.”

  Henry presses something into Radnor’s hand. A stick. Irritated, Radnor nearly casts it aside—but his fingers detect the notches. “Where’d you get this?”

  “What’s it say?”

  “It says, ‘Whoever finds this is a chickenheaded toad.’”

  “A whatheaded what?”

  “Actually, it’s considerably more vulgar. Hollis is something of a joker.”

  “I hoped it would say something helpful.”

  “Well.”

  “I found it in an old cabin, away in the woods. Suthers took me there, with a hood over my head.”

  “I know it. Suthers took us there to work on the roof and the wall chinking one winter, years ago.”

  “Did he hood you, too?”

  “He hooded Charles and me. But not Hollis. At the time Hollis could still see a little, but he let everyone believe he’d grown completely blind. I know where that cabin is.”

  “How can I get there?”

  “Why would you want to?”

  “Well, I left something there.” Henry glances around. “Mother’s bible.”

  “I’ve known dogs who’re better liars than you, Henry,” Radnor says. “I ought to go get some sleep.”

  “There’s two sacks full of coin! Gold and silver!” Henry bursts out. “Suthers hid them near the cabin. It’s a fortune, enough money to buy out my father and buy your brothers’ freedom, too.”

  Radnor turns the notched stick in his fingers and half-listens as Henry tells a story about some outlandish robbery in Alexan­dria. The problem is what to do if this money is real.

  He pockets the stick. “Give me the other one,” he says. “The one I gave you in Washington.”

  Henry searches his trousers and comes up with the stick. Radnor takes it and feels over the notches with his thumb, then pulls his knife from his belt and begins to cut on the reverse side.

  Radnor feels Henry’s touch on his sleeve. Radnor shakes him off. “Did you hear me?” Henry asks. “I’ll buy them out. Your brothers will be free men.”

  “I know where Suthers would’ve hid it,” Radnor says. “We got around out there more than he knew.”

  “Tell me!” Henry cries.

  “No,” Radnor says. “I won’t. I’ll give you this stick, and you’re going to take it to Hollis and Charles.”

  “You won’t tell me?”

  Henry’s voice breaks on the last two words, catching Radnor’s attention. It makes him uneasy for the boy. “Be strong,” he says. “I need you to be very strong now. Hollis and Charles can tell you where it is, but you’ll have to strike a deal with them.” He bends close, to peer into the faint night-gleam of Henry’s eyes. “If there’s as much money as you say, this will be complicated. Suthers won’t make it easy. Maybe others will have to be involved, too. I don’t know. Likely nothing now will be easy. But possibly we’ll both get what we want.” He works at the stick by feel. “First, you’ll take this message to Hollis and Charles. Then, they’ll decide what to do.”

  “I don’t know how to find them,” Henry says, sounding sulky.

  “After sundown, go to the far point at the end of that spit of land in the swamp south of Suthers’s house, where the sassafras grows. Light a small fire. Hollis and Charles will find you. You’ll have this stick, and you’ll give it to them, and then you’ll talk to them about what to do.”

  “There’s nothing past the sassafras but swam
p,” Henry says.

  “You can do as you’re told this one time. But, Henry, they’ll need to know that once you have the coins, you won’t just go off with the money, that you will come back to them, that you’ll help them. It would be a bad risk for them to go after the money themselves, but they could try. They’ll want collateral, to ensure your return.” Radnor considers, shakes his head. “I’m not sure what it could be. Think on it. Bring something to them to hold.”

  “I wouldn’t betray them.”

  “Perhaps, but when the stakes are such as this, trust is a fool’s currency. I’m taking an awful chance already. Hollis and Charles are property and fugitives, and you might turn them in for a reward, you might make them show you where the coins are by putting a gun in their faces. If you did so, I don’t think they’d tell you anything, but you might try it. I have to trust you, that you’ll honor your word.”

  “On my mother’s soul,” Henry says.

  Radnor thinks, A child’s oath on a pickled soul. But his brothers are at risk every day, and if nothing is done, then eventually they will be caught and returned to slavery, or killed. Radnor grips Henry’s shoulder—a thin, bony, wet shoulder. The boy is such a dubious vehicle. “Be strong,” he repeats. “Henry, see this through, and I’ll be eternally grateful. I’ll be indebted to you.”